February 207 p.m.

A jazz program now. Every night. 7 p.m. Radio UNAM.
Something saxophone climaxing. My radio receives only FM.
This radio's also a pocket-size television. Dexter Gordon,
the deejay identifies.

"Have you heard the wailing woman yet?"

Quite suddenly yesterday the guy from England posed this
question, and quite out of any context. My fork between
plate and mouth, my eyes intent upon his, my response came
slowly, slowed by a logjam of associations.

The first of these associations was the "wailing woman"
of Mexican folklore. La Llorona the Mexicans call her. She
is said to wander the streets of Mexico City at night; to
wander the lonely mountain paths of the highlands at night;
to wander stretches of desert near northern cities at night;
to wander riverbanks, and oceansides. Wanders and wails, she
does, through the night, in search of children she has lost,
seeking to reclaim them. Along the rivers the children have
drowned, the stories go. In the deserts and forests her
children have been stolen away by wild animals. In the D.F.
they have been kidnapped. Everywhere the story rings
similar, made distinct only by regional considerations.
Everywhere the message rings the same. Do not go out at
night, children. Be careful at night, children. La Llorona
will get you. So when the guy from England asked if I had
heard yet the wailing woman, I first envisioned this wailing
woman, and my fork paused between plate and mouth.

The next association was of a stone idol I saw in the
anthropological museum. It was a stone idol of the Mexica
goddess of the night. The legend of the wailing woman has
pre-Colombian roots. Exactly to where these roots go is not
so clear. This Mexica goddess though was said to wander the
night moaning and wailing. Many believe, thus, this goddess
the legend's source. The curator of the museum mentioned
this possibility in his printed description of the idol. I
recalled this when the guy from England posed his question.
But I recalled, too, a Mexican tour guide who strolled up to
the idol just as I was to move away from it. I stepped
aside. I waited to hear what he would say of the figure. In
tow with him slogged an American family. Mom, Pop, two boys
and a young girl. The girl gripped the tour guide's wrinkled
brown hand. Bleary-eyed the family slogged. Only a quarter
way through the vast museum and already they no longer saw
anything, already they had been numbed by the volume of
objects.

"Look at this one," the graying tour guide said to them
in English, impishly grinning. The little girl hung onto
him. "Now what do you think she would be the goddess of?"

The goddess of the night is a female figure, squatting.
Her fists are clenched tightly, planted firmly on her knees.
Her face is a horrible grimace, teeth outsized, gnashing.
Her lips are retracted into an angry or a pained or a
frightened snarl.

The graying jowlish guide paused dramatically. The
family looked on carelessly, indifferently. Then the guide
proclaimed, "She was the goddess of childbirth!"

And the mother's eyebrows hiked. And pop and the boys
squinted, recoiling their heads. And the little girl
contorted her face, "Oooh," crying, her eyes very wide, her
grimace not unlike the stone idol's.

Again I read the curator's description. Unless this
Mexica goddess of the night doubled as the Mexica goddess of
childbirth, this was some private joke for the tour guide.
And I looked at him. And, to be sure, his soft shoulders
were quaking with inward laughter.

I inserted the forkful of mole into my mouth.

"...on the metro," the guy from England specified.

"Oh," I said. "No."

"They get on and just start wailing and want you to give
them money. I thought, if you think I'm going to give you
money for that...They see this white guy in the corner and
think I have money and so come toward me."

I stomached the insensitivity. In a normal tone I
answered honestly: "Yeah, sometimes they make up songs about
their injuries and deformities. It gives me the creeps."

"I guess that's one advantage we have not knowing the
language," he said.

And I heard then an older man from a couple days ago. He
sang as he boarded the metro: "I have no eyes. I have no
eyes. If you can see me give me pesos." And that old man
from my first stay here in Mexico City, ten years ago. "I
was hit by a car," he keened. He removed his cowboy hat then
to reveal a most shocking head injury. The front quarter of
his skull had been crushed. I've never understood how the
man survived, how his brain could function. It was an image
out of a nightmare.

Piano piece.

I rode the pink line of the metro today. I rode it from
its first to its last stop. The artificiality of its
environment gave me a headache. Cool, was the air, yes, but
smelling of steel, electricity, marble polish. And un-
nourishing the light, weirdly stark and dim, turning
everyone's tawny hue sallow. No oasis, this, ever. The
whole place is too unnatural. Fluorescent. The echo of your
footsteps even. The smooth whish whish of the doors open and
close. Alarm buzzers. The false silence. Impersonal
announcements. Roaring, colliding tunnels of air as trains
meet. Chrome and half-darkness and stone and fiberglass.
Blandness. Dulls the psyche. Gray and gray and gray. Even
the bright billboards, the occasional art object, the bright
trains, the occasional archeological replica, the bright
dress of the straphangers--it all only accents the gray.
Gray and gray and gray. A stunted colorless flower, you
hold, a nubbin. Concrete and stanchions and girders and
plexiglass. Recorded voices. The limbo look of the commute.
A soup of black hair, of weary eyes. A soap advertised. A
bit of gum peddled by a lone vender. That hum. That
background hum. Droning machinery, vents. And the car rocks.
And the rocking car pulls you forward with its momentum as
the rocking car slows. Two tones. Whish whish. And you
exit to a billboard hawking a new pension plan.

Then the taxi ride. I was nervous about it because of
warnings I saw posted outside the anthropological museum the
other day. They were posted in English and their source was
the U.S. State Department. They alerted Americans to be
careful taking taxis. Since the economic crisis began some
years ago several embassy employees have been assaulted in
taxis, apparently. The taxistas drive them out of the city,
beat them up and then take their money. The posting advised
against "free taxis." It advised to take only taxis from
"fixed stations." This was a minor challenge for me. I did
not know where to find a fixed station from the metro. So I
deboarded at the Insurgentes station and walked that
underpass to the Zona Rosa. I figured I could find a fixed
station there because of all the tourists. I was right. I
taxi-ed then to the corner near where I once lived, near that
VIPs restaurant. That was all. I memorized a few
observations as I rode and scribbled them down afterward.
The driver had a laminated picture of the Virgin Mary hanging
from his rearview mirror. He had Tom and Jerry stickers on
his dashboard. I noted the "bahooga hooga" of his VW horn
and the inexpensive odor of the interior leather. And then
that ranchero song I haven't heard in a couple days played on
the radio. The taxista turned up the volume. The two of us
sang along under our breaths. I tipped him a little extra.

And...Smashing Pumpkins.

I've found small bugs in my hotel bed twice now. I think
they may be biting me. I have an itchy rash.